Consistency and reliability of untrained consumers' perceptions of fabric hand of men's suiting

Abstract

The current study is aimed to analyze the consistency and reliability of untrained consumers' perception of fabric hand. A group of untrained assessors are recruited to evaluate the fabric hand of a number of suit fabrics through free sorting and rating experiments. Two statistical methods have been used to measure the consistency between the sorting and rating data of the assessors in replicated sessions. According to the types of data obtained from different evaluation procedures, different multidimensional scaling techniques are applied to investigate the tactile dimensions, and further on the assessors' preference regarding the total hand of the samples for the end-use of men's suit. It is found that simple sorting and rating procedures are efficient methods for acquiring consistent sensory results from untrained assessors on a relatively large number of textile products, and that multidimensional scaling is an effective technique for interpreting the obtained non-descriptive sensory data.